History: Care Takers

You’ve probably passed it hundreds of times. And missed it. A little white wooden sign posted at the edge of busy Academy Street provides the only marker denoting the Kilgore-Lewis House, set back from the road and facing McPherson Park.

To add to the somewhat clandestine existence of this gracious historic home, the structure, which plays host to the Greenville Council of Garden Clubs, hasn’t always been in this spot.

Built between 1836 and 1838 by George Boyle, the white clapboard, Palladian-style house once sat next door to Buncombe Street United Methodist Church. Today, it still boasts its original four-inch heart-pine floorboards, which are fastened together with wooden pegs, simulated marble baseboards and mantels, and pine doors painted to look like burlwood. Josiah Kilgore purchased the lot and home for $1,200 in 1838. Shortly before his death, he gave it to his daughter Mary Keziah Kilgore and her husband, John Wycliffe Stokes, for $5 and “natural love and affection.” Local legend has it that Mary and John were married in the front parlor.

Their descendants: five generations of Stokeses, Gaineses, and Lewises, inhabited the home through 1974 when it was sold to the Methodist church. And when the parish outgrew the space that same year they offered the house to any organization that would move, restore, and use it for cultural purposes. The City of Greenville provided the current site, and the Greenville Council of Garden Clubs provided the woman-power to restore what would become their headquarters.

Not only did they bring back the beauty of the transplanted old home (breaking nary a window during its transport across town), but Garden Club members uncovered a treasure in their five-acre backyard. A spring, presumed to be the water source for Chancellor Waddy Thompson’s home as far back as 1807, was also restored. Both landmarks are currently listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The house is now open to the public Monday-Friday, and in a fitting continuation of the legacy of those first nuptials, couples continue to exchange vows in the parlor.

—Lydia Dishman